The hotel we stayed at in Warsaw was a bit swankier than our previous hotels and lived up to the Cathy and Cecilia European breakfast trifecta: smoked salmon, nutella and cappuccinos. We were in breakfast heaven.

In the morning we had a half day tour of Warsaw. We had a driver and a guide for this tour since we visited some sights that weren’t within walking distance of our hotel. We visited a former summer palace of one of the Polish kings, a monument to the Jewish ghetto that was destroyed by the Nazis and the Royal Palace. We also had a late morning ice cream while on our tour at what our guide told us was the best ice cream shop in Warsaw. We thought we’d be able to remember this particular shop because it had “Lody” written outside which we assumed was the shop name. It turns out lody means ice cream in Polish so this wasn’t exactly a distinguishing characteristic! There was literally an ice cream on every corner in the Old Town. Below is a picture of the Mermaid statue that sits in the center of the Old Town Market Place. Unlike Krakow, Warsaw was almost entirely destroyed during WWII. Here’s an image what the market place looked like in 1945.

In the afternoon we walked through the Old Town into the New Town and visited the Maria Skłodowska-Curie museum. The museum is housed in the building where she was born. Although the collection wasn’t large it was very interesting. I guess Mom and I must be big Marie Curie’s fans because we visited her tomb in the Pantheon when were Paris two years ago

As a side note the Dalai Lama had lunch in our hotel on this day. We secretly think he might have been staying there too but we have no confirmation other than miscellaneous security looking guys hanging around in the lobby. Also we were unable to visit the ballroom at the Royal Castle because he had received honorary Warsaw citizenship there earlier in the day.

We had a very leisurely second day in Warsaw. It was the last full day of our vacation and were were all about underachieving. First we lingered over a multi course breakfast. Then we walked down Warsaw’s “Royal Way” for an hour until we reached the Park Łazienkowski where there are both peacocks and squirrels. Our guide on the previous day had been very excited about the prospect of seeing squirrels. We spent about an hour in the park (relaxing and working on a cryptic crossword) and then walked back to our hotel for a late lunch of salads and cappuccinos.

In the afternoon we read and napped (well one of us napped, you can guess who). Later we went for our dinner at a traditional Polish restaurant in the New Town and then stopped off to buy ice cream cones which we ate while sauntering back to our hotel savouring our last night in Europe.

The next morning we were up early to have breakfast and then catch our ride to the airport. We flew to Frankfurt and then on to Ottawa. While the airline agent was checking my passport before admitting me to the waiting lounge he actually noticed that today was my birthday and wished me a happy birthday! I was impressed. Dad and Alli had flown in from Vancouver arriving in Ottawa about 30 minutes before us so they were there to great us when we arrived.

As at all our previous stops we were excited to check out breakfast on our first morning. This hotel got points for having the largest coffee cups and nutella. After breakfast we set out on a private walking tour of the Old Town of Krakow. Several of the usual stops on the tour were closed because they are churches and don’t allow visitors on Sunday mornings. However, we had an excellent guide and she gave us advice regarding which churches to visit in the afternoon. We were able to visit the Wawel Cathedral which was used for coronations of kings since the 13th century. We also saw where Pope JPII lived when he was a bishop in Krakow and Wawel Hill which is the site of a castle. Interestingly Krakow was not destroyed during WWII so it has maintained much of its character.

After our tour we had lunch at a local “Milk Bar.” These were canteens run by the state during the communist era providing cheap filling meals to the poorest citizens. There are still a few remaining. We split one order of cheese/potato pierogies and one order of meat pierogies. Given that we were in Poland it seemed that eating pierogies was a necessity. After lunch we visited the church of St Francis (above) which had very impressive Art Nouveau stained glass work and St Mary’s Church with an impressive high alter. After being on our feet for the day we retired to our hotel room to recharge with a cryptic crossword.

The next morning we went to visit the Wieliczka salt mine. The mine was operational from the 13th century until 1996. You can only enter the mine with a guide but instead of goining a large English group we had arranged to have our own guide for just the two of us. This was nice since we were actually able to hear the guide and we were able to move slightly faster than some of the larger groups.

We visited the upper three (of nine) levels of the mine and reached a maximum depth of 135 metres. There were many chambers in which the miners had carved out statues depicting folk stories and kings etc. There were also several chapels and of course a restaurant and souvenier shop. Below is a statue of Nicholas Copernicus carved out of salt.

In the afternoon we walked out of the Old Town and into the Jewish quarter. Later we went back to our favourite vegetarian restaurant from the first night and went to a church for a one hour classical concert featuring Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons.

The next morning we visited the Czartoryski Museum which holds a collection of various items from Etruscan to Egyptian to Polish artifacts. The main attraction is the Da Vinci painting Lady with an Ermine which I enjoy because the subject’s name was Cecilia. Then we got some Krakow “bagels” and headed to the train station to catch our train the Warsaw.

We ate dinner outdoors at a restaurant along one of the main streets of the Old Town. It was quite enjoyable watching people walk by.  There was a four piece brass band playing close to the restaurant so we were able to play “name that tune” for a while, at least until they started to repeat pieces.

We started our first full day in Vilnius with the hotel breakfast. Mom gave this breakfast high marks because there was smoked salmon. The local “breakfast dessert” was a small log of sweetened cream cheese with a stripe of  jam and covered with with a thing coating of chocolate. It was wrapped up for portability like a granola bar. After breakfast we set out on a three hour walking tour of Vilnius. Our guide was a Latvian who lives part time in the Netherlands. She was excellent and we really enjoyed the tour despite the fact that it rained for the entire time!

We started in Užupis which is a district of Vilnius with it’s own constitution. It sort of reminded me of Fremont in Seattle. I couldn’t really get a picture of the posted constitution (due to the rain) but I found the picture below here. My personal favourites are: 26. Everyone has the right to celebrate or not celebrate their birthday and 31. Everyone may be independent.

Then we headed into the Old Town and visited several churches, including the chapel at the Dawn Gate. We also walked through the University grounds and ended our tour at the Vilnius Cathedral. Interestingly vehicles are allowed in Vilnius Old Town while they weren’t allowed in Old Town Riga. This made navigation a bit more difficult but we managed. When we got back to our hotel we were soaked through. In fact the guidebook that was inside Mom’s purse during the entire morning was so wet that water ran out when she squeezed it!

I don’t recall what we did that afternoon so I can only imagine it involved a cryptic crossword and me trying to read The Hobbit but ending up taking a nap. During this trip Mom and I decide that we needed to underachieve. We’re used to being overachievers – in life and in travel. On this trip we were much more relaxed. We wanted to learn about the countries we were visiting but we didn’t feel the need to wear ourselves out each day. In fact our goal became “to underachieve a little more today each day!”

For dinner we went out to a mostly vegetarian restaurant which employed recovering alcohol addicts. We had salads and then dessert. We didn’t underachieve on desserts.

The next day was excursion day. Once again it was raining. We started with a trip to Grutas Park – an outdoor collection of Soviet era statues. When the Soviets finally left Lithuania they left behind thousand of statues and other pieces of propaganda. These statues were torn down and many of them eventually found their way to this private park. It was very interesting seeing statues that once sat in town squares now on display along a boardwalk in the forest. I think it shows both a good sense of humour in the Lithuanian people and a strong commitment not to forget their history. There was also a petting zoo but we didn’t visit that.

In the afternoon we drove to Trakai Island Castle. It was a quite a picturesque setting – a castle on an island in a lake. Of course it was grey and rainy but we soldiered on. The castle dates back to the 14th century and we quite enjoyed visiting the history museum housed within the castle. Especially impressive was the collection of coins that had been excavated from the castle grounds. We returned Vilnius, had a pleasant Italian dinner and then packed our bags for the next day’s flight to Poland.

Up next: Poland

We took a direct flight from Ottawa to Frankfurt and thoroughly enjoyed the fact that we didn’t have to go through Pearson. Unfortunately the flight left fairly early in the evening and since it was just over 6.5 hours long we only managed to get 2-2.5 hours of sleep. We arrived in Frankfurt about about 6:30am local time and had a couple of hours to kill before our connecting flight. We both dozed for most of the 2 hour flight to Riga. Someone on our Riga flight had a can of shaving cream explode in their bag and several bags coming off the belt were covered in shaving cream. It was quite the sight. Mom’s bad had a bit on it but we were able to clean it up quickly in the bathroom.

Once we arrived at our hotel and immediately crashed for a 2 hour nap. We stayed at the Hotel Gutenburgs which was very conveniently located right in the Old Town. After our nap we wandered around the Old Town getting our bearings. Eventually we found a tourist information center and exchanged some euros into Latvian currency. We had a nice dinner at an Italian restaurant and then went back to the hotel and went to bed.

Our hotel breakfast included the usual European fare of meat, cheese, bread and eggs with some surprising additions: gum drops and chocolate coated marshmallow cookies. It’s always nice to have a breakfast dessert when you’re on vacation! We started our first full day in Latvia with a a three hour walking tour of Riga. We covered both the New Town with its Art Nouveau buildings and the Old Town with its many churches. We also saw the Latvian Freedom Monument. Our guide was a Russian who has lived in Latvia her whole life but does not have citizenship because she refuses to go through the naturalization process. It was a little difficult to follow her English but we were certainly starting to learn a lot about the interesting national relationships in this part of the world. In the afternoon we visited the Blackheads House museum and then headed back to our air conditioned hotel room to seek retreat from the 30C heat.

On our second day in Latvia we had an excursion out of the city. We first visited Cesis Castle and took a cable car across a river valley on our way to Turaidas Castle. The castles were quite well restored and seemed to have changed hands many times (Russians, Germans, Poles, Swedish) since the 12th century. It was quite windy and rainy in the morning but luckily the weather cleared in the afternoon.

We started our third day in Latvia with a leisurely breakfast and then headed out to the Architecture Museum. This ended up being a one room display on the different paths to industrialization of the Scandinavian and Baltic States. After the museum we walked very quickly (it was pouring rain this morning) to the Riga Cathedral. We attended a 20 minute organ music concert which included pieces by Bach and several Latvian composers. While we were waiting for the concert to start we spent some time working out the topology of a lined sheath dress and which seams had to be left unfinished to turn it inside out. It was the intersection of two of our favourite things: math and sewing!

Next we went to the Museum of the Occupation of Latvia. We spent quite a while here learning about the Soviet and then German and then Soviet again occupation of Latvia in the 20th century. This wasn’t exactly a fun museum (let’s face it the Soviets treated the residents of the Baltic countries pretty inhumanely) but it was very moving and was really a highlight of our trip.

We had a late lunch of salads at “Double Coffee” our favourite local coffee shop chain. We were chilled from the rain so I also had a Mocha and mom had a coffee with a shot of a local balsam liqueur that we had read about. It’s always good to do some liquid sightseeing! That evening we went up to our hotel’s rooftop restaurant for a very nice farewell to Riga dinner. It had rained on and off all day and the weather was so cool and blustery that they had thick wool shawls available to keep the diners warm.  It seemed only fitting to have cheesecake with lingonberries for dessert.

The rest of our Latvia pictures are available here.

Up Next: Lithuania

I’ve posted a few more photos in a Sooke Hike photoset. My mother’s Vancouver Island photoset is also definitely worth a look.

Usually I find it very difficult to answer the question “what was the highlight of your trip?” Not this time. It was hands down the Alhambra. If you ever find yourself near the south of Spain you must go! I’d say the surprise highlight of the trip was Lisbon. We sort of tacked it on to the end of our Spanish vacation but I think Portugal deserves a longer visit some time in the future.

Traveling with my mother was an absolute blast. She did a wonderful job making hour travel arrangements and building our schedule. The amazing thing is we did not stop talking the whole trip. Well that’s not quite true but we certainly never ran out of things to talk about and (over-)analyze. The trip absolutely flew by!

Here are links to all the entries in my 2008 Europe Travel Diary:

• Part I – Madrid
• Part II – The Alhambra
• Part III – Gibraltar
• Part IV – Barcelona
• Part V – Lisbon

Enjoy!

The full set of all my photos from the trip are here

We spent our last morning in Madrid at the Reina Sofia Museum of modern art. The main attraction was Geurnica, a painting by Picasso depicting the horrors of the first saturation bombing of a small Basque town. It was very powerful and the room of studies done in preparation was also quite interesting. The works in the museum were arranged chronologically and we hung in until about 1940 and but lost steam quickly. I have decided hat I have about one modern art museum visit in me per annum. That’s all I can take After the museum we had a long lunch in a square near our hotel and then caught a shuttle bus to the airport and a flight to Lisbon.

The next morning we had breakfast at the hotel and set off for Belém. After finally figuring out how to buy a transit day pass from the machine we caught a subway and then a streetcar (trolly) to the Jerónimos Monastery. There were a lot of tour groups (I hypothesize a cruise was in town) in the church but the cloisters (which had an entry fee) were quiet. There was an orchestra warming up in the church while we were visiting and by the time we left the cloisters the church had been closed for rehearsal. Lucky we arrived at the right time!

After the monastery we walked to the Monument to the Discoveries honouring Portugal’s explorers and history of attempted world domination. Mom and I both quite liked the style of the monument. That’s Henry the Navigator at the front holding a model caravel. The fifth person back from Henry (holding the ring) is Ferdinand Magellan who was the first explorer to circumnavigate the world. For a full diagram of who’s who see this pdf.

After a Portuguese lunch (I had a fish and potato dish that was delicious, I think it was Bacalhau à Gomes de Sá) we visitied the home of the original Portuguese custard tart. Matt and I used to eat these when he lived in little Portugal in Toronto. Apparently only 3 people know the original recipe. They were just as good as I’d remembered, if not better! Plus how often do you get to try the original of something!

 

After our visit to Belém we did a walking tour through a few of Lisbon’s other neighbourhoods. We took a funicular up a hill (Lisbon is very hilly!) to a viewpoint and then wound our way back towards the city center. Then we took another trolly up to visit the Sao Jorge Castle.

Later that afternoon during our walk back to the hotel we stumbled upon a Ginjinha store. Well it really really more of a hole in the wall with a counter. Ginjinha is a local Lisbon liquor made from sour cherry like ginja berries, sugar and grappa. We shared a 1,10 euro shot for a little liquid sightseeing.

We spent the morning of our second day in Lisbon at the Gulbenkian Museum. It was the private collection of an Armenian oil tycoon and was donated to the city of Lisbon in gratitude for asylum granted to him during WWII. In about 2.5 hours we walked through art from 5000 years of human history. There weren’t a lot of pieces but each one was equisite. In the afternoon we took the metro out to the Oceanarium (Europe’s largest aquarium). I’m a big fan of aquariums and enjoyed the visit. I will particularly remember seeing a sunfish which is perhaps the ugliest fish I’ve even seen!

The rest of my Lisbon photos are here.

The next morning we were up early to start the long trek back to North America. It took me about 26 hours to get from our hotel in Lisbon back to my apartment in Seattle!

Next: Wrap-up

We took a 5.5 hour train ride from Algeciras back to Madrid. We spent the afternoon visiting the Royal Palace which we had been unable to visit on the first day of our trip. As one might expect, the palace was quite lavish. That evening we conquered Tapas. That might not seem like much of an accomplishment but it was for us. We’re not really the types to bar hop having a drink and bit of food at each place so instead we went to a restaurant fairly close to our hotel and sat outside on the patio. We ordered a pitcher of sangria and five different tapas over the course of two hours. We sampled everything from smoked salmon to Spanish torta to a delicious mystery croquette!

The next morning we rode the high speed train to Barcelona for the day. Barcelona might have deserved a longer visit but this was all that we could fit into this trip. The train reached speeds in excess of 300 km/h! Surprisingly it didn’t feel that fast. We got a newspaper on the train and were surprised to see showers forecast for Barcelona! We hadn’t seen a drop of rain yet on our trip and didn’t have our rain jackets with us! Luckily although we had a cloudy day it never actually rained on us.

Our first stop was Gaudi’s Sagrada Familia church. It was really really impressive. Construction began in 1882 and is ongoing. We were quite interested in the displays that showed how Gaudi incorporated mathematical constructs from nature into his designs. Who doesn’t love a good Hyperboloid Structure! I’m planning on returning to Barcelona in 50 years to see it when it is finally fully built. Mom doesn’t think she’ll bother!

Next we took the metro to the Picasso Museum. It was really neat to see some of Picasso’s younger works from before the cubism phase. Then we went to Las Ramblas a very wide pedestrian street teeming with locals and tourists alike. The main reason we were there was to try churros con chocolate. Yes, we dipped greasy fried churros into a cup of thick hot chocolate pudding. It was very good as a snack but we still didn’t understand how it can be eaten as a breakfast food!

The rest of my Barcelona photos are here.

Next: Part V – Lisbon

It was another early morning as we were up at 6am to catch our train from Granada to Algeciras. We arrived at around noon, walked to our hotel (across the street from the train station), checked in and dropped off our bags. We then went directly to the bus station and caught a bus for the hour-long ride to La Linea. From there we walked across the border, flashed our passports to the guard and voila were in a different country!

Technically, Gibraltar is one of fourteen “British overseas territories.” I am choosing to count it as a country in its own right on my list of countries visited. Not everyone will agree with this and that’s OK. When it comes to counting countries I say you can follow any set of rules that allow you to sleep at night. By the way, precedent had been set years ago when I choose to count Bermuda as a country (it’s another overseas territory). Also John and Yoko were married there. And so was Sean Connery. So there.

Upon arrival in Gibraltar we boarded a local bus and rode out to the southern most point of Gibraltar, Europa Point. From there we could see the ships travelling through the Straight of Gibraltar and, in the distance, mountains in Morocco. This is the closest I’ve ever been to the continent of Africa!

Our next stop was the cable car to the top of the Rock of Gibraltar. As soon as we made it to the top we were met by one of the local Barbary Macaques (better known as Barbary Apes). It was just sitting minding its own business but I wanted nothing to do with it. See, I’m not really an animal person so having wild apes around was a little unnerving. Of course they’re totally accustomed to having people there but the warning signs made it clear they were not to be messed with!

The views from the rock were great and we even got to watch a plane land on Gibraltar’s runway. The runway is partly on reclaimed land that juts out into the bay. All vehicle and foot traffic into and out of Gibraltar has to cross the runway so when a plane is about to land or take-off they bring down barricades and temporarily close the road! We choose not to stop at the apes’ den half way down the rock because we’d seen plenty of apes up top, it was hot and we were tired.

We spent the rest of our time wandering through town and having dinner at a local pub. I embraced the Britishness and had a pint of beer and fish & chips. Yummy!

At the end of the day we walked back across the runway, into Spain and caught a bus back to our hotel in Algeciras. It was a long day but a great one. Gibraltar certainly is a unique place and I’m happy to have been able to visit. My full set of Gibraltar photos are here.

Next: Part IV – Barcelona

We caught at 7:40 train from Madrid and arrived in Granada about 4.5 hours later. From the train station we took a taxi to our hotel, Hotel America, which is on the grounds of the Alhambra. After checking in we took a bus back down into town for lunch and a visit to the Royal Chapel (with the tombs of Isabella and Ferdinand). Then we took another bus up to the San Nicolas viewpoint on a hill facing the Alhambra. It was great to see The Alhambra from a distance to really take in it’s magnitude. We went to bed that night eagerly anticipating our visit of the Alhambra the next day.

Here’s a brief history lesson: The Alhambra is a Moorish palace built in the 12th century. At one point 2,000 Muslims lived within the Alhambra’s walls. When the Catholics conquered Granada in 1492 they took control of the Alhambra. There are four main points of interest within the Alhambra. (1) The Alcazaba: the original castle/fort on the hill. It’s mostly in ruins now (although several towers still stand) but it was once the main defence point of the Alhambra. (2) Palacios Nazaries (Nazrid Palace): this is the Moorish royal palace and the highlight of the Alhmabra. The rooms and halls have intricate stucco work and amazing geometric tile patterns. The courtyards have beautiful fountains and the whole thing is amazingly preserved. (3) Charles V’s Palace: Built by the conquering king but never finished it’s a square building with a circular courtyard that was meant to be topped by a dome. (4) The Generalife Gardens: These gardens once fed the residents of the Alhambra. The sultan also had a summer palace here.

Since we had an afternoon entry time we couldn’t pick up our tickets and enter the grounds until 2pm. Our first stop was The Alcazaba. Next we got in line for our 3pm entry into the Palacios Nazaries. They let 300 people in every half hour in increments of 50 every 5 minutes. We took our time walking through the palace trying to take it all in. I don’t think I can find words to do justice to the palace’s architecture, design and beauty. I was most impressed with the geometric tile patterns. They were amazingly well preserved. After the palace we toured the Generalife Gardens and then walked back through the grounds to the Charles V’s palace. What a day!

After our visit we had dinner and the Parador San Francisco Hotel right next door to our hotel (but 2.5 times more expensive per night!). The meal was excellent and served on a patio overlooking the buildings of the Generalife under a full moon! I ordered from the vegetarian menu and had pumpkin and kidney bean soup and vegetable paella. I’m still dreaming about that soup and will have to try and recreate it at some point!

Our visit to the Alhambra was the highlight of the trip for me. The rest of my Alhambra pictures can be seen here.

Next: Part III – Gribaltar